Nationwide polling data compiled and published by the Pew Research Center (PRC) is showing that more than two-thirds of American adults believe that cannabis should be legal.
According to the survey data, 67 percent of respondents indicated that the use of marijuana should be made legal, the highest percentage of support for legal cannabis ever recorded by PRC.
PRC has been polling American opinion on marijuana policy since 1969 and says that support for legalization has more than doubled in the last ten years.
In 1989, PRC reported that only 16 percent of Americans supported cannabis legalization.
“The percentage of the public who favors adult-use marijuana legalization has skyrocketed over the past three decades and shows no signs of abating,” says NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri. “As more and more states have moved forward with their own marijuana liberalization policies in recent years, public support has only grown stronger.”
Altieri says that in a time when the political divide is at its largest, the issue of cannabis legalization is one of the few policy issues upon which most Americans can find common ground.
According to PRC’s data, support for the legalization of adult-use cannabis is highest among self-identified Democrats and Millennials at 78 percent and 76 percent, respectively, and lower among Republicans at 55 percent.
Only 35 percent of respondents born before 1945 indicated that they believe cannabis should be legalized.
